Analysis of Rockefeller Drug Law Reform Bill

Restores judicial discretion for broad categories of individuals charged with drug offenses, including many second felony drug offenders.

As an estimate, between 45 – 55% of the drug offenders currently confined in New York’s prisons – from about 5400 to 6600 people – would have been eligible for judicial diversion at sentencing.

Provides for a significant increase in funding for drug treatment and rehabilitation programs in the prisons, as community-based alternatives, and as a part of a continuum of pre-entry services.

Calls for a greater role for the State’s Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Services (OASAS) in monitoring and guiding drug treatment programs in the prisons.

Expands retroactivity to limited categories of currently confined drug offenders who would be able to petition the courts for a reduction in their sentence.

CONS

Broad categories of offenders are excluded from judicial diversion, for whom there can be no alternative penalties, and for whom mandatory sentencing provisions still apply:

people convicted of A-1 and A-2 level offenses

people convicted of second time B level offenses who are not substance dependent

people with a violent felony conviction within the last 10 years adults who sell to minors

The issue is not that people who fall into these categories should never go to prison. The issue is that the prison sentence is mandatory, and a discriminating judgment cannot be applied that takes both the background of the offender and the circumstances of the crime into account.

The main criterion for guilt is still the weight of drugs in people’s possession at the time of arrest, not their role in the transaction.

Over 10,000 drug offenders will be left behind bars without an opportunity to appeal for a reduction in their prison term.

News

(January 9, 2016) New York, NY: The Correctional Association of New York roundly applauds the continued commitment of Governor Andrew Cuomo to raising the age of criminal responsibility in New York, ending the prosecution and incarceration of 16- and 17-year-olds as adults. It is now up to the members of both parties in the NYS Legislature to do their duty to make this a reality. In spite of the Governor’s assertion that the "nation looks to NY to find a way up," we actually fall behind 48 other states, along with North Carolina, by continuing to treat children as adults in the criminal legal system. New York must Raise the Age of criminal responsibility this legislative session.
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Press

ALBANY — New York’s complex of 54 state prison facilities is struggling to fill vacant jobs for nurses, doctors and other health care providers. Filling those vacancies and dealing with an aging prison population at facilities across the state have become among the tallest challenges for the $3 billion correctional system, top administrators concede. In [...]Read More

Prison Monitoring Reports

Attica Correctional Facility, a 2,000-bed maximum security prison in western New York, continues to operate as a symbolic and real epicenter of state violence and abuse of incarcerated persons in the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) state prison system 43 years after the 1971 prison uprising and violent suppression by state authorities. The [...]Read More

Prison Monitoring Reports

Auburn was the first prison to implement the “Auburn System,” a system of incarceration in which incarcerated people worked in groups during the day, were housed in solitary cells during the night, and lived in enforced silence. Today, Auburn Correctional Facility operates as a maximum security, DOCCS-operated prison for men ages 21 and older.Read More